Chipmaker Micron Technologies Inc. posted record revenue and profits for its fiscal third quarter today as it rode a wave of continued demand for its memory products.

The company reported a profit after certain costs such as stock compensation of $3.15 per share, ahead of Wall Street’s projections. The company’s revenue totaled $7.8 billion for the quarter, with net income coming in at $3.82 billion.

Micron’s results swept aside concerns that demand for its dynamic random-access memory and flash memory chips were on the wane. Sales of its memory products were the chief revenue driver once again, with DRAM pulling in 71 percent of its revenue and NAND flash accounting for 25 percent.

“We set new records for revenue in SSDs, mobile managed NAND and automotive solutions along with cloud/enterprise graphics DRAM memory,” Micron Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement. “We see ongoing momentum and healthy industry fundamentals in the fourth quarter to close out an exceptionally strong fiscal 2018.”

Micron’s stock remained more or less flat following its earnings report, down just 0.15 percent in after-hours trading, to $59.35 per share. But shares had risen nearly a percentage point in regular trading on a down day for the overall market.

Despite the flat trading, stock market analysts were largely positive in their assessment of Micron’s latest quarter, indicating that the market for memory suppliers looks favorable.

“The outlooks for both DRAM and NAND are strong, with pricing relatively stable, which would be much better than initial fears,” Vijay Rakesh of Mizuho Bank Ltd. told Bloomberg. “Cash flow was strong, and the balance sheet is approaching net cash positive earlier than the company had expected.”

Micron said its combined DRAM and NAND flash data center revenue jumped by 87 percent compared to the same period a year ago. It’s Compute and Networking business unit posted revenue of $3.99 billion, up 67 percent year-over-year. Cloud server and graphics memory sales doubled year-over-year. Micron’s mobile business also saw strong growth, with revenue up 55 percent to $1.75 billion.

The only real disappointment for investors was lower-than-expected sales of its nonvolatile memory product 3-D Xpoint, which it created in partnership with Intel Corp. Micron’s storage business, which includes 3-D Xpoint, posted revenue of $1.1 billion, up 13 percent year-over-year.

“We sold very little of 3D XPoint to our partner [Intel],” Micron Chief Financial Officer Dave Zisner told analysts on a conference call.

Zisner explained the reason for this lack of sales was due to Intel not selling enough of its Optane nonvolatile memory products. “We have been discussing the commercial terms of our future-generation 3D XPoint collaboration,” he said about the partnership with Intel.

Micron will, however, press ahead with plans to launch its own 3-D Xpoint products later this year and expects to see meaningful revenue from those in 2020.

“The drive towards next-generation applications drives an insatiable hunger for in-memory apps,” said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc. “The faster processing provided by in-memory storage for artificial intelligence, machine learning and even databases creates a fast growing and robust business for all vendors in the space, including Micron. Now we have to see who can deal with the rampant growth best and scale their business to new levels of operation. The next quarters will tell.”

The chipmaker said in its guidance for its fiscal fourth quarter that it’s expecting revenue of $8 billion to $8.4 billion, ahead of analysts’ consensus of $8 billion. The company also forecast an adjusted fourth-quarter profit of $3.30 per share.

Image: Micron